Service creation, maintenance, and delivery for communications networks have evolved over the past several years. For example, instead of deploying hardware and software to networks, virtualization of services and service components is sometimes used to create service and/or network functions on distributed computing platforms. These “cloud” computing architectures and technologies have resulted in a change to the traditional hardware-software model by allowing network operators to create and deploy services on commercial-off-the-shelf (“COTS”) hardware. This can allow flexibility in terms of scaling, locating, and/or using the services.